Presented by NVTC's eBusiness Committee and Security Sub-committee of the IT&T Committee.

September 14, 2004

7:30 am Registration
8:00 - 9:30 am Program

The E-Campaign: How the use of technology is transforming the current Presidential campaign, and the associated security issues.

Join us for a panel discussion regarding how the use of technology is transforming the current Presidential campaign and the associated security issues. Examples include the collection, use, and security of voter and donor data, how money is being raised through the Internet, what voter history data is collected and used, how voter/donor data is being used during and after the campaign, how the campaigns are keeping in touch with their supporters/donors and the security of voting machines and election data.

Young urban trendsetters around the world are growing bored with sexually explicit advertising and can be better reached with more wholesome marketing appeals, a new study says.

The study by HeadLightVision, a trends analysis arm of marketing company WPP, suggests that many young adults are trying to reclaim their innocence through “play...silliness and family-style togetherness.”

Examples of the trend include the popularity of bingo and board games at trendy bars, the embrace of childlike fashions, and respect among young people for “computer geeks” and skateboarders.

The agency says advertisers should respond by playing along with the younger set, emphasizing feelings of nostalgia or kitch, or crafting commercials that are seductive rather than explicit.

To Technoflak's ear the phrase play along with the younger set sounds a little creepy. Good public relations starts with respect for your public.

Nothing says our copy writers have run out of ideas like an advertising campaign based on sex. It is particularly inappropriate in business to business selling, where you need to convey the idea of building your customers' profits.

Beyond that, Technoflak can only say that stereotype of computer geeks as sexless is not one that the technically inclined are likely to appreciate, and the idea that skateboarders are more sexually innocent than any other group of young people is not one that would have previously presented itself.

Somehow Technoflak is unable to dismiss the thought that WPP has misread the results of its own survey.

Friday, August 27, 2004

Tom Biro publishes The Media Drop, an entertaining web log that tracks the business of news media. But he never forgets why the news business matters and reports on the terrible price some pay to report the news:

Monday, August 23, 2004

At issue is the ability to authenticate the original source of e-mail messages, a major hole in the current system that allows spammers to easily forge return addresses and hide their tracks.

This month, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) reviewed several e-mail authentication proposals, agreeing to fast-track a submission from Microsoft known as Sender ID. The group also reviewed submissions for signature-based authentication from companies such as Cisco Systems and Yahoo and recommended the authors combine and resubmit those proposals together.

Technoflak is not enthusiastic about any solution that gives one vendor a monopoly.

Why aren't spammers in jail? Almost all spam is obviously fraud, so why are they prosecuted under existing laws?

Friday, August 20, 2004

NCC-AIIM is pleased to open the season with the analysts' view of Enterprise Content Management and the Web. Charles Brett, Vice President of Technology Research Services at the META Group is our featured speaker.

Drawing from extensive research available from META Group, Mr. Brett will provide an overview of the current state of the ECM market and the critical trends facing the industry today. While many organizations are implementing and moving toward infrastructure-scale ECM deployments and consolidation, fully leveraging – and understanding – web-based architectures requires much more than browser access to content.

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

AIIM International is looking for qualified speakers to deliver presentations at the AIIM 2005 Conference. If you are an end-user, an industry expert, a consultant or analyst on an industry topic, a solution provider willing to present with a client, or any combination of the above, we are interested in reviewing your submission.

Please carefully review the following instructions before submitting your abstract:

(1) Selection preference will be given to end-user, analyst and consultant speakers followed by speakers from vendor/supplier companies. Speakers from vendor/supplier companies must co-present with an end-user client. This client must be identified by name and company within the original submission.

Here is a great PR tip. Encourage your best customers to be speakers at industry conferences. Resist the temptation to grab the spotlight. Never doubt that if your customers look good, you look good.

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Word has come down about a new project to outsource your company's HR, payroll, and 401k management functions. Word has also come down that the project will revolve around an identity federation infrastructure between your company and three service providers. The goal is to provide Single Sign-On (SSO) for your users while leveraging each party's existing identity management and authentication system. All this will be done using a standardized Web services interface.

The Web Services Federation and SAML are both dominated by vendors, the Liberty Alliance has the most participation by end users. Technoflak believes that standards are too important to leave to vendors and only participation by end users can insure quality.

Edit-

The problem with blogosphere is that when you slip on a banana peel, the whole world knows about it. Dichotomy's Purgatory offers Technoflak a clue.

Monday, August 16, 2004

Grok is a slang verb sometimes used by geeks roughly meaning "to understand completely" or more formally intuitive understanding

The term originated in Robert Heinlein's novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where it is used by a man raised with Martians and literally means "to drink".

A character in the novel (not the primary user) defines it:

"'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science— and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man."

Tom Biro has one solution, "Publishers absolutely need a way to figure out demographics and get their content paid for, but I do agree that it's unreasonable to think that people are going to register at every single site out there, and keep the logins straight. I'm of the general opinion that if the publishers who run multiple web properties could just aggregate logins so that signing in at one publication gets you in to all the publications, reading news would be a lot less painless."

Good idea, but that only addresses the convenience side of the equation. Privacy is also a major concern. Readers may understand why you want to know their zip code. They might even understand why you want their age and gender, but when registration asks for more information, readers feel they are being spied on. That is why services like Bug Me Not are popular. Boing Boing illustrates the privacy problem, Elizabeth Albrycht shows how the registration process can be rigged to sign us up for email we do not want.

Shorter version, advertisers and publishers need to give up this idea of control and adopt business models that cultivate customers, not spy on them.

What would you do if you had a trio of reporters hot on your heels? Suppose the reporters thought they had the sort of story that can make a career. Such a case is unfolding before our very eyes. Let’s pretend you were the PR flack concerned and examine some of the steps you could take.

Part of the rationale for the Iraq war was the allegation that Iraq had acquired “yellow cake” uranium from Niger. We now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and that the documents that were the basis of the “yellow cake” uranium story were forgeries. For the reporters, the question is who forged the documents and why?

Now everything that has ever been written about crisis communications advocates candor. Alas, this idea is more honored in the breach than observance. Let’s pretend you are the sort of flack who believes it is possible to create confusion until the whole ugly mess blows over, or another news event comes along to distract public attention.

You could always put out a decoy story, like a fox laying back tracks in an effort to throw the hounds off scent. You could plant a story that the forged documents were not the only evidence indicating that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium. You could suggest that the forgeries were made by an independent operator, not connected to the government in any way. You would want to be sure to plant these stories in a newspaper which had not been a big cheerleader for the war, such as the Financial Times.

You can muddy the water with competing stories. Once those stories are printed, the news organizations in question will be intellectually vested in perpetuating their version of events. In the ensuing confusion over competing versions, voters may well give the government the benefit of the doubt.

The other trick for the is to define the issue as narrowly as possible, were we technically lying? If not, it follows we were telling the truth.

Obviously, the blend of intelligence operations, press leaks, and official announcements described here are way beyond the scale of most PR work. But watch how this plays out, for there will be many lessons. Notice the evil influence of anonymous sources.

Technoflak’s view is that governments should wage peace, and avoid war. War is sometimes necessary, but its terrible cost must never be underestimated.

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

On the Waterfront is the story of an ex-prize fighter turned longshoreman who struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses. By degrees he comes to understand that his obligation is to society and right conduct, and not corrupt union bosses. The difference between solidarity and omerta is as great as the grand canyon, but human beings are social creatures and sometimes omerta can look like solidarity.

Matthew Cooper of Time magazine is facing a similar dilemma and we must hope he learns the difference between solidarity and omerta. He is one of the cold-call-six, the reporters who received the leak that Amb. Joe Wilson’s wife was an undercover CIA case officer. Not just any case officer, his wife was in charge of tracking the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Apparently it did not occur to Cooper at the time that he was witnessing a crime in progress and that it was his duty to alert his readers. But at least he knew better than print the story, unlike Robert Novak who took the bait and ran with it.

Such is the cult of anonymous sources that even now the whole controversy has degenerated into a legalistic dispute. The loss of our intelligence network monitoring the spread of weapons of mass destruction, at a time when our country is threatened by terrorism, is not deemed a newsworthy subject. Emboldened by the lack of editorial outrage, the deadly anonymice to continue to sacrifice national security on the alter of political expedience. Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a double agent and computer genius, who had succeeded in penetrating the highest levels of al-Qaeda, was exposed when the anonymice revealed his name in the course of justifying the latest terror alert. Now his usefulness is gone and his life is at great risk.

So, Matthew Cooper tell us, who are the anonymice? Your obligation is to your readers and your country, not the anonymice who place us all in danger. Tell what you know, not just to the grand jury, but to the entire world. It is the story of your life. You could be a contender.

Saturday, August 07, 2004

While Brucato remains the owner of a public relations firm--Brucato and Halliday--she says she is no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of the company. If a story about a client suggests a conflict of interest, she adds, she will disclose the relationship to viewers.

This doesn’t pass the laugh test. KSTP can kiss their credibility good bye. The next time they accuse any politician of having a conflict ofinterest you can be sure the press secretary will make the obvious retort, ”look who’s talking.”

Brucato and Halliday is no better off. One of the things clients pay PR pros for is the knowledge of how things will come across to the general public. This is clearly a firm without a clue.

Friday, August 06, 2004

In the years since he came to power in 2000, Putin has presided over what could be seen as the neutralisation of Russia's once vibrant independent media. This has been achieved by a range of methods, including the seizure of assets of leading critics, the removal of independent-minded directors and the intimidation of journalists and their sources.

A leading consultancy firm has warned that the widespread adoption of RFID could open up the door to a range of potential scams, resulting in huge losses for retailers and manufacturers, writes Anthony Fletcher.

The report, from Forbes, suggest that while bringing huge potential benefits in terms of traceability and access of information, there are still flaws in the concept.

For example, a consumer wishing to pay less for a product could alter the price of a particular product by taking out a hand-held personal digit assistant (PDA) equipped with an RFID reader and scanning the product’s tag. He could then replace that information with data from the tag on, say, a €3 carton of milk.

If the checkout stand is automated, then the store's computer system will be none the wiser.

Personal and business computers across the country are being infiltrated by programs called spyware that can track your online habits, draw a bead on your interests and then flood your screen with unsolicited advertisements. Like human infiltrators, these programs can be evasive, dangerous and determined to seize control.

"People are tearing their hair out and screaming about this," says Megan Kinnaird of the nonprofit Internet Education Foundation in Washington, D.C. "It's causing problems for everyone."

That might be only a slight exaggeration.

"I'd say 75 percent of the computers we've seen have spyware on them," says Dan Bukowski, owner of Computer Medic Center in North Palm Beach. "The only ones that don't are those folks who don't go on the Internet."

Spyware, also called adware, lurks on many Internet sites that sell products or that offer downloads such as music, software or photos. Some of these sites appear to be free but are supported by advertisers who pay to have spyware deliver their messages or collect information about what computer users are browsing for.

Why isn't spyware a felony offense? Why is it that the politicians who are so eager to put filtering software on public library Internet connections do nothing to protect us from spyware? You would think they would at least want to protect their own computers.

YES, THERE ARE MULTIPLE TYPES OF PDF FILES...A couple of weeks ago the Justice Department, after finally acceding to a Freedom of Information request, posted a study on "workforce diversity." However, it was heavily redacted: nearly half of the report was blacked out.

But in yet another example of utter cluelessness about how computers work, the report was posted on the web in PDF format. More specifically, it was posted in a PDF format called Image+Text, so while the viewable image was redacted, the underlying text (which allows you to search the document) was still there, buried in the innards of the file.

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

After a brief introduction from Bently Roberts, Clerk of the Merit Systems Protection Board(MSPB), Tim Korb, Manager of Information Services, opened the second session with a description of the MSPB’s requirements for XML technology and the potential for document storage and retrieval.

Korb began by describing the work of the Merit Systems Protection Board. It is part of what used to be the Civil Service, and its mission is to protect the merit system in government employment. In addition to generating studies it adjudicates disputes. Its adjudication system acts as a court, receiving many filings and sending out notices and decisions in field offices across the country. Korb said, ”We create a lot of electronic documents, unfortunately not as accessible as they might be.” He lamented ”limited search capabilities and even where good, different from one silo to another.” The MSPB must cope with different applications in different repositories and can vary from one format to another and one version to another.

The MSPB was looking for a solution that would be vendor neutral and would allow for accessibility into the future. Already there are difficulties accessing documents in older versions of Word. Korb asked, ”How are we going to get what we have now into XML?” The MSPB needed a solution that would convert virtually any common format into XML and present the look of the original document. They also needed the capability to use the metadata of the legacy documents and the ability to search the documents. They would need the capability to take data from XML and put it into other formats. The MSPB needed to leave the old versions of documents undisturbed, keep old data bases intact and synchronize with the XML data base. Korb explained that the case management system is a relational data base. Here Owen Ambur, chair of the XML Work Group, asked if the MSPB is participating in the Office of Management and Budget’s effort to standardize case management. Korb answered, ”Not at this time.”

Korb explained that unlike the Federal Courts, which require electronic documents to be submitted in PDF format, the MSPB permits electronic filings to be submitted in almost any format. Korb went on observe that it would be nice to have full text search on previous inquiries (FOIA, congressional requests, etc.) so that MSPB would know how they had previously handled such an inquiry.

Owen Ambur said that the Federal Courts had wanted PDF-A used as the standard, and he wanted to give Adobe credit for building XML capability into their products.

Ambur observed that if we are to have a citizen-centered government, then we must permit the citizens to file documents in whatever format they prefer. If government makes it difficult to for a citizen to do business with it, then it is not doing its job, at least not in a democracy.

Here Technoflak observed that PDF format does not show a document’s history of revisions. Word and other formats do permit this, as Tony Blair knows to his cost. Ambur expanded on this, saying that IT people do not always understand the business requirement for preserving the integrity of the document, what lawyers refer to as the ”four corners of the document.” It is critical for both legal and archival reasons that documents look the same tomorrow as they do today.

Here Tim Korb introduced Ipedo’s team which was led by Kam Thakker, with Chetan Patel and Alex Chang assisting. They described their system as an XML intelligent platform. Ipedo delivers enterprise-information-integration by using XML to integrate and manage information from disparate complex data sources.

Ipedo’s software creates a ”virtual data layer” by taking information from a data store, creating a virtual XML file, analyzing the data and assembling it to put it into the appropriate form.

The system handles relational data bases, documents and messages. It can retrieve structured, semi-structured and even unstructured electronic data. Ipedo can grab live data from public and private web pages and even messages if necessary. Security and encryption are built in so that it can be used outside the firewall.

The application is format and schema independent. It fits with existing developer tools, .Net or Java, and is platform agnostic.

Thakker was asked about Ipedo’s two day turnaround. He replied that the MSPB had provided a series of Word documents, which were converted into XML and then imported into Ipedo’s system. Thakker explained that the Word documents already had the metadata. Here Korb said he was proud that the MSPB had been using metadata for a while, and he had had something to do with that. Thakker went on to say that Ipedo queries go into multiple sources. The query default is ”or”, so putting ”and” will bring up additional documents.

Sunday, August 01, 2004

Dave Sullivan, of Zonar, spoke about the limits imposed by existing DTDs and schemas upon XML’s ability to encapsulate data and allow for its optimal use by existing data systems. Using his work for realtors as an example, Sullivan made clear the almost unlimited number of qualifiers you could have for any element. He gave as an example: a house, a house with a ceiling fan, a house with a ceiling fan by a specific manufacturer.

Sullivan emphasized the importance of establishing conventions concerning definitions and adhering to them.

One thing he said that caught Technoflak’s ear was that to design proper systems, “you have to know the industry, you have to know what you are talking about.”

He described the nature of the web as ”open, huge, heterogeneous, evolutionary, and not necessarily benign.”

Passin described Friend of a Friend networks at length and how they might work with intelligent agents to retrieve information. At this point a member of the audience said, ”This is an example of why you need to know more about serialization than you think.” To this Technoflak would only add, precisely so. The ability of intelligent agents to crawl the web and retrieve all manner of information is a perfect example of why software development is too important to leave to software developers.

Passin talked about Resources Descriptive Framework, which consists of a thing, its trait or aspect, and its value. It is like the grammatical construction of subject, verb, predicate. Passin observed that many view Resources Descriptive Framework as the basis for the semantic web. Passin said that, ”real logic people regard the semantic web as ridiculous”, and he described them as ”pretty intolerant in discussion lists.”